Tuesday, 28 February 2012

Sunday, 26 February 2012

So we managed to sly into the quarry to film, but safety was obviously paramount, it was a windy day and standing over a good drop with two people who are petrified of heights.There are still one or two shots still to be filmed- we had to cut off short due to the fading light and absolute cold.Also cooked up a batch of fake blood to use in the coming shots, after all I'm sure you don't fall and land completely unharmed...To make the blood was fairly simple red food colouring and water- but then obviously that doesn't quite have the same thickness as blood so we added honey to give it that thickness. Overall a great session, but maybe not quite as much footage captured as I would have hoped for. Hence why we have another session planned for today.

Saturday, 18 February 2012

To put it simply Bradford is the perfect location for the music video- not only as a former industrial town itself (not in that sense!) but as a town with a clash of different and opposing idea's- the old Victorian style which clashes with the more modern aspects of the town in a whole host of different locations. Then there's the Bolton Wood quarry, where the final 'section' of the music video takes place. And various sections are filmed very close to it.

So here is a shot of the quarry from an angle similar to our closing shots of the main narrative, obviously very high up with a near panoramic view of Bradford, ideal for a closing location, with this it's a case of how we fit everything we want into the frame rather than what we don't want in the frame.

The location once again from a different angle, as you can see it lends itself to the look desolation and isolation, it looks quite far from locations nearby and generally a wide open space, now for obvious health and safety issues we can't film IN the quarry- which makes the ending problematic somewhat, as the final shots of the main narrative is a shot of the protagonist lying on the floor on the quarry, but luckily we can substitute here as the shot will be a close up/ extreme close up it makes it extremely easy to find an ideal location.

Friday, 10 February 2012

So with the snow thwarting yet another film shoot, this has meant that we now have to film all the footage we need on Sunday 12th February 2012. This means that we have a need to move fast to edit the footage, which means that we hope to have a new rough cut before 18th Feb so that we can do any urgent re-shoots in the following few days.
We're making strides with the mag ad however which gives us more time to spend on the digipak- which also hangs on using images from the performance aspect of the video.

In line with the updates to the video idea, the narrative has also evolved into something that will hinge itself onto the enigma, the mystery aspect. This means that it definitely will be very confusing on first viewing and intentionally so. To further this it'd we're using the editing software in the post production to create a heightened sense of enigma. The chief inspiration is Nine Inch Nails- Down In It.

The overall arch for the narrative is that one person (possibly the only person in the music video) has become paranoid that he's being watched, through the webcam which is where it all starts then escalates from that point and as the video progresses on. So that the protagonist becomes immersed in this paranoia of being watched and things become increasingly messy with regards to visual editing, more emphasis on the broken video filter. Which gives the video a degraded look to it, with more shots showing the viewer things that don't fit with established style of the video so one example would be the illuminate eye as seen in the sample footage, this is going to evolve throughout until we show select parts of the filming process (shots where the camera is intentionally visible to the viewer), which ties into what we hope will be a twist ending- shots of someone editing the music video and leaving the room with a cut to static ( hints of the eye again) as the music fades away. We hope that this would tie into the idea of the music video as a product, but once again is an ambiguous and enigmatic item to place at the end, it asks the question as to whether the protagonist was paranoid? As well as our preferred reading of the video as a product of the media, something created and artificial in nature.

Tuesday, 31 January 2012

The editing process on the video is one that's been through one, the sample footage measuring approx. 34 seconds.

The editing was more fast paced than before which meant that we had to cut 10 mins of solid footage into around 34 seconds. The pace was very fast which meant that we had some issues with the amount of footage recorded but obviously with more footage we can afford to do some longer takes. The screen of final cut (left) is a neat example of how we created the video footage effect, combined with total desaturation. Also notice the frame around the footage which we dragged out to tighten the framing on some shots where the framing would detract form the image. Overall to get the 34 seconds- the editing must have taken around 7 hours overall to generate the desired effect. Of course to create the sample footage we exaggerated the special effects somewhat so that the more FX side of the video is on display, in the final video we expect the effects to come in somewhat more gradually rather than seemingly random- and create a much more even balance between the FX and the pure video footage.

Sunday, 22 January 2012

Well like many, many things- it didn't go quite as planned. The filming had to be hugely cut down for what was originally planned and done over two days rather than one with nowhere near enough footage filmed. but with what we have I do think that we have enough to create another sample and thus give the audience a rough idea of where we're going next with the footage.

Thursday, 19 January 2012

The cover is stylised as to have the members of the Beatles as orange silhouettes coming from the title

love- which is surrounded by an orange outline. This gives it a comic book art style.

The background, made up of orange swirls and the generally textured look to the cover give it a very 'retro' feel which is appropriate for The Beatles. The warm colours are also indicative of the genre, the light colours would seem to signify psychedelic-rock.

Rear

The rear of the digipak is essentially the same kind of image only with more orange textures. Also all the copyright notices and credits appear here. Something to note is the lack of song titles on the rear. This wouldindicate that the band are fairly big and that the audience would know what to expect from the digipak

Here we have the track listing on the inlay

we have the track listing here too, which appears to be fairly extensive, we also have a continuation of the art style, only with the band members being much a much lighter shade- which contrasts with the second CD which features darker band members, but essentially the same image.

The second inlay appears to be essentially the same but only with slightly different textures and the CD cover, a

Wednesday, 18 January 2012

So the feedback we recived for our sample footage clearly indicated that there was an issue with using a young looking protagonist- it didn't fit in with the genre was one of the main issues raised. Obviously we're trying to cater to two different audiences with our video.A) Re-brand the NiN band to better fit with a modern audience (youth 15-24)B) Appealing to the older NiN audience- the established fan-basewho have been listening to NiN since the late 80's.

So to do this we thought that our casting had to be reviewed carefully- how we could get our casting to better reflect the video theme.

Checking through we've decided to cast my Uncle in the role....He's older and thus would appear better in the video- but not so old as to alienate the younger audiences.He suits the role too with Black hair and stubble- thus making him near perfect for the video.

Thursday, 5 January 2012

Tonight we are filming in two of our three locations; the school and around Ikley which would leave only Bradford to film over the weekend so that hopefully we can spend next week editing a first full rough cutof our music video and have it edited for the Friday in a fairly complete form.

UPDATE

Our casting update has meant that this has changed, along with some locations.Obviously this is a set back but we, as a group, think that this would greatly improve the quality of the video.

Mark Romanek has worked with Nine Inch Nails on two music videos, such as Closer & The Perfect Drug, both of which where high budget videos and Closer was one of the more prolific videos for Nine Inch Nails courting a fair amount of controversy because of the nudity and the depictions of a monkey on the cross (obviously relating to the religious connotations).Reznor was also asked to score his film The One Hour Photo however the studio (Fox) believed Reznor to be the wrong choice and subsequently decided that he was the wrong cho canned his soundtrack for the film.

He also directed the music video to Jonny Cash's music video to his cover of NiN-Hurt, so obviously he has a fair amount of history with the band.His music video for A Perfect Drug was very gothic with a blue tint to make it feel much darker visually colder too. The gothic one is something shared with the Closer video, both of which featuring abstract visuals, with Closers style helped via the 20's Film reel used for filming the video, giving it a more sepia feel.

The overall directing style seems very similar to that of Stanley Kubrick, with a strong focus on the surreal elements, I'd say especially with the

Wednesday, 4 January 2012

Trent Reznor has been nominated for his second golden globe for his work on the soundtrack to the new The girl With The Dragon Tattoo.This is the second time that he's been nominated for the awards.On a slightly sadder note he's lost his Grammys but has said that he doesn't care about loosing them.